Get ready to share the burden of India’s increasing energy needs --- use of fly ash generated by thermal power plants will soon become mandatory in any type of construction in the country.
HT Image
{{^htLoading}} {{/htLoading}}
For you, the construction cost of your house would increase, as fly ash bricks are at least 20-25 per cent costlier than the traditional clay bricks.
Irrespective of that, the ministry of Environment and Forests want the builders to play a more proactive role in deposing over 900 million tonnes of fly ash generated till 2006 to reduce the burden on the country’s fragile environment. In 1999-2000, the fly ash deposited in ash ponds was just 450 million tonnes.
The ministry issued a draft notification earlier this month seeking views from all stakeholders on its new policy framework making it mandatory for the municipal bodies or development authorities or building plan approval bodies to incorporate use of fly ash in construction. The provision is also applicable for all construction work done by the Central Public Works Department and State government agencies.
{{^htLoading}} {{/htLoading}}
{{^usCountry}}
That’s not all. The financial institutions giving loans for construction will be required to incorporate a clause in the loan agreement making use of fly ash compulsory for the builders. The ash generated from thermal plants can be as bricks, tiles, cement or blocks, the ministry’s notification states.
{{/usCountry}}
{{#usCountry}}
That’s not all. The financial institutions giving loans for construction will be required to incorporate a clause in the loan agreement making use of fly ash compulsory for the builders. The ash generated from thermal plants can be as bricks, tiles, cement or blocks, the ministry’s notification states.
{{/usCountry}}
Even in road and embankment construction, the ministry wants fly ash to be used extensively unless it leads to increase in the project cost by over 25 per cent or is technically unfeasible. For that, the road construction agency will have to get a certificate of unfeasibility from the Indian Road Congress.
The new notification also prohibits the government to fill low lying or reclaimed areas with soil. “Only pond ash shall be used for reclamation or compaction,” the ministry has stated.
Apparently for the first time accountability has also been fixed for the government officials. The officials responsible for sanctioning the building plans would be responsible for enforcing the new proposal, the ministry’s notification states.
To ensure that fly ash is properly dispose, the government has also prescribed the disposal mechanism for thermal plants, the largest generators of ash in India. The thermal plans will be required to submit annual compliance reports on fly ash disposal to either State Pollution Control Boards or the Central Pollution Control Board. Guidelines have also been set for fly ash utilisation generated by the new thermal power plants.
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.
